Transatlanticism
by turtleducklings
Summary: I need you so much closer. Axel/Roxas; Roxas puts his ear to Axel's chest and listens to the hollow emptiness of his chest cavity, and Axel knows that if Roxas had a heart it would burst from feeling too much.


**author's note:** yay angst time. it's been too long. since both writing angst and writing kingdom hearts.

akuroku has recently taken over my life and i'm not really sure what happened but the other day i saw an icon i'd saved of the two of them in the tumblr folder on my computer and i started shrieking and sobbing and it's been the same ever since.

title and lyrics are from death cab for cutie. reviews are very much appreciated.

**disclaimer:** kh and these two angst-filled idiots belong to square enix.

* * *

The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flatlands to your door  
Has been silenced forevermore.  
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row;  
It seems farther than ever before.

* * *

One time Roxas puts his ear to Axel's chest, black leather simultaneously cold and warm against his cheek, and listens to the hollow emptiness of Axel's chest cavity.

"You're not gonna hear anything," Axel says, fingers unconsciously curling into the ink of Roxas' sleeve.

Blonde spikes brush his collarbone as Roxas shakes his head, drawing back. "Why are we like this?" His eyes are blue and wide and Axel knows that if Roxas had a heart it would probably burst from feeling too much.

Axel laughs. "I don't know," and his voice is rough and scratchy as he says, "but if there's a god out there who made us this way, then he's just as heartless as we are."

* * *

"I wonder what I was like, before," Roxas says conversationally, wiping syrup-sticky hands on his thighs and sucking the remainders of his ice cream off the wooden popsicle stick, legs swinging over the edge of the clock tower. Axel's already tossed his stick somewhere behind them, not bothering to look and see where it landed.

Xion didn't show today so it's just the two of them. They'd been sitting on mostly companionable silence until Roxas piped up.

Axel doesn't say anything at first, mostly because he's not sure what to say. _I know what you were like Before,_ he thinks, _I've met your Other._ He sighs before he settles for humming noncommittally and leaning back on his palms, closing his eyes against the red brightness of the perpetual twilight of this world.

"I mean," Roxas says, abandoning his popsicle stick by setting it down beside him on the edge of the clock tower, "I don't remember anything from before I joined the Organization." Axel tightens his fingers around the scrap of brick ledge on either side of his legs because he knows what's coming next. "Do you? Remember Before, I mean."

Axel stills for a beat, then yawns and shrugs, rolling his neck and shoulders before flopping backwards, arms behind his head and legs still dangling high over Twilight Town. "A little. Bits and pieces, mostly." Roxas doesn't prod, surprisingly, simply nodding and turning to face the fiery sunset again.

Roxas sighs. "I guess I mostly just wish I remember what feelings are like."

Axel stiffens in surprise then laughs, long and hard. "Me too, kid," he says, leaning up to clap Roxas on the shoulder, "me too."

* * *

Axel's not really sure when it happened; all he knows is that one day he looked down at Roxas and realized that he was the only person in maybe the whole world that he actually liked.

* * *

"Axel, what d'you think love's like?"

Axel sighs, chewing his lip. "I dunno, Rox." He considers the smaller boy out of the corner of his eye, watching as a smile spreads across his face, blindingly bright and beautiful.

"I think," Roxas says slowly, "that love would probably feel like wanting to be with someone all the time." He nods. "Even when they're at their worst. Like, it wouldn't matter what they did. You'd still love them and want to be with them, no matter what." He turns to look at Axel. "You know?"

Axel grins. "Roxas," he says, leaning forward, "that is the single most corny thing I have ever heard anyone say." Roxas laughs.

* * *

_If I had a heart, I think I'd love you._

Neither of them say it. Neither of them have to.

* * *

Axel can remember one time from Before when he'd fallen into one of the deeper fountains in Radiant Gardens and was left floundering, limbs kicking and struggling against nothingness as he gasped for air that was't there, lungs burning and heart pounding.

That, he thinks later as he watches Roxas walk away from him and from the Organization, must be what missing feels like.

* * *

Sora has his eyes.

As soon as Axel finds himself pinned by that baby blue gaze, his plans to get Roxas back go flying out the window and he knows that he couldn't turn Sora into a Heartless even if he wanted to.

(And he does. Oh, how he does.)

Sora's expression is an odd mix of determination and caution. Axel sighs. "You look just like him, when you make that face," he says, grin stretching too-wide across his features, canines sharp and gleaming.

Sora looks surprised for a minute, as though that was the last thing he expected him to say. He shakes himself and Axel can see his fingers curling tighter around the handle of the Keyblade. "That's not the first time someone's said that," he grits out. Sora's face is like an open book, Axel thinks; he can read the confusion in the tilt of his head and the set of his mouth. "Question is, who's 'he'?"

Axel's grip around his chakrams goes lax, his body straightening slightly. "You mean...you don't know?"

Sora groans in a manner that Axel thinks is a little overdramatic and a little too much like Roxas. "No! Would someone just _tell_ me already?" He looks angry and frustrated and confused and Axel knows that if he just attacks Sora, slices his chakrams through the boy's body and lets red flames burn his heart out then Roxas would be with him again, and it must be his imagination or something because the empty space between his ribs _aches_.

(_No one would miss me_; that's not true, **I would**—)

Axel dismisses his chakrams and shakes his head slowly, hands on skeletal hips and shoulders hunched forward. "Sorry, kid. Can't be spoiling the ending when you're only halfway through the story. Got it memorized?"

He summons a portal and ignores the confused and infuriated cries of the boy who hold His Boy inside his heart.

It's not fair, he thinks, that Roxas has to share a heart with Sora; if the idiot had just asked Axel would have shared his with him in a second.

(He laughs at himself then, because he's forgotten that he doesn't even have a heart to share.)

Axel turns and is gone before Sora can reach him.


End file.
